“The failure of our education system to teach America’s young people their own history,” I wrote nearly four years ago, “is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that almost no one under 40 today knows anything about Sam Adams except as a popular brand of beer.” And many have suspected that this historical ignorance is not accidental, but rather that the dumbing-down of American education serves a specific political agenda, as those who are conscious of the pedigree of their liberty are apt to be more zealous in defense of their rights. Our liberties were “purchased . . . with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood,” Sam Adams declared in 1771, and thus Americans should never allow themselves to be cheated out of their inheritance.
By the time of our War of Independence, Englishmen had been fighting to establish and defend their rights for more than 500 years, dating back at least as far as Runnymede in 1215, and even further back to Henry I’s Charter of Liberties in 1100. The right to trial by jury, an institution originally unique to the English, is guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment. Americans are prone to take this inheritance for granted, along with all the other rights specified in the Bill of Rights, including those summarized in the Fifth Amendment by the phrase “due process of law.”
Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s indictment of Donald Trump is a Constitutional obscenity. Bragg has crafted an indictment that denies Trump his most fundamental constitutional right, to know the criminal charges against him. That is a right with a 1,000 year old pedigree in English and American law.
(Hat-tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.) The lowliest thief incarcerated at Riker’s Island cannot be denied such rights, and what Bragg has done in framing this indictment of Trump is an insult to every American, an attempt to defraud them of their ancient liberties, purchased by “toil and danger” and bequeathed to us as an inheritance. However ignorant Alvin Bragg may be, we cannot suppose that he is violating these rights accidentally, and thus he must be considered an enemy of justice, deliberately seeking to destroy liberty. That the voters of New York City elected Bragg to this office, and apparently support him in his unconstitutional actions, says a lot about the nature of “democracy” in 21st-century America. People need to wake up to the danger.
In a historic first of shredded norms and judicial weaponization — at least in the formerly exceptional United States — a former president and current front-running presidential candidate has been arraigned on criminal charges.
Donald Trump arrived in New York City on Monday to face charges conjured up by Soros-backed Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg through a grand jury process in the near-universally Trump-hating city. The former president spent the night in his luxurious upscale quarters in the landmark Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan.
On Tuesday, the former president reported to the DA’s office and courthouse at 100 Centre Street to be fingerprinted and processed just before 2 p.m. In a blow to slavering leftists everywhere, the coveted mugshot was not taken. Democrats and Trump Derangement sufferers had been expected to use the image for historic purposes reflecting the seriousness of the charges and the gravitas of the situation, such as printed toilet tissue, dart boards, “Trump for Prison 2024” t-shirts, and similar hate aids. Nor was the once-and-possibly-future president handcuffed, most likely because his Secret Service detail pointed out that it would be ludicrous to handcuff a man surrounded by Secret Service agents.
From there, the front-running Republican candidate in the 2024 presidential race appeared before New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan at 2:29 p.m. The historic charges that are serious enough to warrant turning the United States into a banana republic and dividing her citizens against one another were finally unsealed. They included 34 counts of falsification of business records, which is a misdemeanor in New York State but which Bragg had tortured into felonies. It is extremely unusual for a single alleged crime to be split into 34 separate charges, explained an expert who had been briefed on the situation. “For example, when a shoplifter steals six handbags, she will only be charged with one count of larceny.” But here we are.
The scholars and theologians assembled under royal commission to produce the official English translation we know as the King James Bible were working with Hebrew and Greek original texts, and when it came time to decide what word to use for women who have sex for money, settled on the word whore. If that word was good enough for the finest scholars of 1611, it’s good enough for me, but the folks at CNN have chosen the phrase “adult film actress” to describe Stormy Daniels, as if sleazy porn videos deserve to be classified as “film,” as if it is “adult” behavior to watch such sleazy videos, and as if acting was her claim to fame. Or infamy, to be more exact. The fact that Stormy Daniels (née Stephanie Clifford) is having her “15 minutes of fame” extended we owe to Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, who was elected two years ago on a simple platform: Prosecute Trump. (We are not supposed to say “Soros-funded” in connection with Bragg, although he was in fact funded by Soros, because it’s anti-Semitic to call attention to this.)
Bragg has made it a policy not to prosecute crimes he deems “low-level offenses,” and crime has skyrocketed out of control in New York, but what Bragg does prosecute is the very serious crime alleged against Donald Trump: Paying a whore to shut up.
This is only a crime if it’s committed by a Republican. Basically, being a Republican is a crime unto itself, according to Alvin Bragg.
“A whore is a deep ditch” (Proverbs 23:27) and Bragg has stumbled into this ditch by his own foolish choice, apparently ignoring the omen of Michael Avenatti’s downfall. Avenatti gained national fame as attorney for Stormy Daniels, and where is he now? Fourteen years in federal prison is a harsh lesson, and one might think Bragg would be forewarned by this example, but he is heedless of the danger, “relying on debatable facts and untested legal theories to transform minor misconduct into a felony,” to quote Jacob Sullum (hat-tip Instapundit). But I did not start this post with the intent to engage in punditry about the Stormy Daniels case, because what’s the point? Every pundit on the planet is babbling about this case, and why should I add my voice to that cacophony? No, I started this post with the intention of making fun of CNN:
Primetime ratings for CNN have fallen 61% this month — the steepest dip in viewership among the big three cable news giants, according to the latest figures released by Nielsen.
The drop in ratings is a bad omen for CNN, which has struggled to right the ship since parent company Warner Bros. Discovery tasked Chris Licht with the job of turning the news channel around more than a year ago.
Despite the poor ratings, Licht has the support of his boss, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, who gave a pep talk to network managers urging them to steer clear of politically oriented commentary and partisanship.
The Manhattan grand jury hearing evidence in the Stormy Daniels “hush money” investigation on Thursday voted to indict the former president, two sources with knowledge of the case told The Post.
The vote sets the stage for the first ever criminal prosecution of a former US president.
The grand jury that returned the unprecedented indictment had since January been hearing evidence and witness testimony related to a hush-money payment made on Trump’s behalf to porn star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign.
It comes as Trump, 76, is attempting to regain the White House for a third time, running for the 2024 Republican nomination.
He has blasted the investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office as a “political Witch-Hunt trying to take down the leading candidate, by far, in the Republican Party” and insisted “I did absolutely nothing wrong.”
Trump, who announced he expected to be arrested March 21 and called on his supporters to protest, also accused District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, of “prosecutorial misconduct,” and claimed any charges brought against him would be barred by statute of limitations.
In the lead up to the 2016 election, Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer, Michael Cohen, paid Daniels $130,000 in exchange for her silence about an alleged affair she had with the New York real estate mogul in 2006.
Trump denies the affair.
Cohen pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court in 2018 and was sentenced to three years in prison for crimes related to the Daniels payment and another to model Karen McDougal he helped arrange prior to the election.
Trump, who was president at the time of Cohen’s guilty plea, did not face charges by federal prosecutors over the payments.
The Manhattan DA’s office then launched its probe into the Republican, with the case gaining momentum in recent months.
Bragg had reportedly been building a case based on the Daniels payment being made with the intent to conceal or commit another crime. . . .
You can read the whole thing. Basically, Democrats want to outlaw opposition. Trump’s real crime — why he’s actually being prosecuted — is that he beat Hillary Clinton in 2016. So now they’ve gotten one of their reliable party henchmen, Soros-funded DA Bragg, to convene a grand jury in Manhattan (where Hillary got 87% of the vote in 2016) to indict Trump on the basis of a far-fetched theory that the payment to Stormy Daniels was somehow felonious. Question: How many other men has Alvin Bragg prosecuted in Manhattan for paying money to whores?
Because I’m pretty sure this payment to the whore Stormy Daniels is only being treated as a felony by Bragg because a Republican is accused of it.
In light of the recent news that Donald Trump might face indictment for an alleged campaign finance violation, several experts have come forward to criticize the case against him. Some have argued that the charges are weak, while others have pointed out the hypocrisy of Trump’s potential arrest, given that Hillary Clinton faced a similar accusation but only paid a fine. . . .
Chris Rock made his statement at the Mark Twain Prize ceremony at the Kennedy Center, which was honoring Adam Sandler. In an apparent dig at the politicians in attendance at the ceremony, he asked the crowd if they were “stupid” for contemplating such a move.
He exclaimed, “Are you guys really going to arrest Trump? Do you know this is only going to make him more popular? It’s like arresting Tupac. He’s just gonna sell more records. Are you stupid?” The comedian’s remarks were met with roaring laughter from the crowd that included the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Biden administration officials.
Here’s the thing: If Democrats could “elect” Joe Biden as president — because 81 million votes, am I right? — and install the brain-damaged John Fetterman in the Senate, they don’t fear any political consequences, no matter how extreme their behavior. Success in rigging elections, combined with the news media’s willingness to act as Democratic operatives as bylines, means that Democrats never expect to face consequences, for anything, ever. We shall see if trying to prosecute Trump on the basis of a case that helped send Michael Avenatti to prison will prove to be an exception to this rule. Stay tuned . . .
Although it’s not my main point, let me briefly address that subject: One of the basic principles of success in politics was distilled to its essence in the title of Phyllis Schlafly’s famous 1964 book, A Choice Not an Echo. That book was written in support of Barry Goldwater’s candidacy, at a time when liberalism was near it apogee of prestige, and the GOP Establishment was trying to foist moderate Nelson Rockefeller on the party as their presidential nominee. Although Goldwater lost in a landslide to LBJ, the choice of Goldwater proved decisive for the Republican Party’s future. There never would have been a Reagan presidency had it not been for “AuH2O” in 1964.
What does “conservative” mean, if it does not mean opposition to liberalism? Or to put it another way: Why should anyone vote Republican, if the GOP is going to support the same policies advocated by Democrats? Schlafly’s book clarified this point at a time when many Republican politicians (notably including Mitt Romney’s father) were responding to the liberal agenda by enthusiastically shouting, “Me, too!”
As it was in the Age of LBJ, so it is in the Age of Biden. Most conservatives, I believe, are in favor of Ukraine’s independence, and hope to see Putin’s invasion fail, but this does not mean — and should not mean — that the Biden administration’s Ukraine policy is off-limits to criticism. As a matter of fact, I have offended some of my friends (including colleagues at The American Spectator) by acknowledging the basic validity of John Mearsheimer’s critique of long-term U.S. policy toward Russia. Our Russia policy has been a mess for decades, going back at least as far as Clinton’s ill-advised intervention against Serbia in 1999 (the Serbs historically being a Russian ally) and Donald Trump at least ought to get credit for having tried to pause this bipartisan bungling.
Much of the problem has to do with the military weakness of our so-called “allies” in NATO. What good is an ally, if they can’t put a combat-effective armored brigade into the field? And the abysmal state of military readiness of our European allies has been notorious for many years because, as Trump repeatedly pointed out, most of them were not living up to their NATO agreement to devote 2% of their GDP to defense spending. (The U.S. spends more than 3.5% of GDP on its military.)
The weakness of our European allies makes a bellicose posture toward Russia problematic. If the Germans, French, Dutch, et al., wanted to confront Putin, why weren’t they doing what was necessary, in terms of defense spending, to create a credible deterrent to Russian aggression? The Europeans seem to have a rather one-sided view of the NATO alliance, with Uncle Sam playing the role of military Sugar Daddy. And when Putin made his lunge into Crimea in 2014, what was the response? Nothing but a lot of talk, talk, talk and economic sanctions, which Putin shrugged off. If the West was not willing to fight for Crimea, why should Putin expect them to fight for the Donbas? And so, by a combination of military weakness and diplomatic provocation, the West more or less invited the 2022 Ukraine invasion. Certainly, Biden’s disastrous pullout from Afghanistan was interpreted as a green-light signal by Putin.
Where is Charlie Sykes’ in-depth analysis of U.S. foreign policy? If he’s written one, I missed it, but what we get from him instead is a parroting of MSNBC talking points about Trump “channeling Kremlin propaganda,” as if it were impossible to criticize U.S. policy without being a pro-Putin stooge. But the real bottom line is this: Sykes voted for Biden, and is defending Biden’s policy in toto — to criticize Biden is tantamount to treason, according to Sykes’ brand of True Conservative™ principles.
Beyond the matter of Ukraine and Russia, aside from any consideration of policy, foreign or domestic, there remains the disturbing question: What the hell happened to Charlie Sykes?
Because of my long-term interest in education (being a Christian conservative homeschooling dad back in the 1990s), I was mainly familiar with Sykes because of his excellent 1995 book, Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can’t Read, Write, or Add, which was largely an attack on the then-trendy “outcomes based education” (OBE) agenda. At that time, there was no difference between Sykes and, say, Michelle Malkin in terms of the basic issues facing America. He was a staunch conservative and, most importantly, was the No. 1 local talk-radio host in Wisconsin.
How much do you know about the business of talk radio? Well, during the 30-year reign of Rush Limbaugh as the king of the genre, there were a comparative handful of hosts — among them Sean Hannity, G. Gordon Liddy and Michael Savage — who were successful in national syndication. But most conservative talk-radio hosts were strictly local phenomena, and Charlie Sykes was one of these. Based at Milwaukee’s WTMJ, he was the morning host beloved by Wisconsin conservatives. He had begun his career as a print journalist, working his way up to editor of Milwaukee Magazine by the mid-1980s before subsequently getting into talk radio. His two-decade tenure as one of the most influential figures in Wisconsin conservative politics arguably reached its pinnacle in 2011, during the showdown over the state budget between Republican Gov. Scott Walker and the state’s powerful public-employee unions. Charlie Sykes was the loudest voice on the right during that protest carnival that attracted nationwide attention, but then things started going downhill. Barack Obama was reelected in 2012, carrying Wisconsin by a seven-point margin, 53%-46%, despite the fact that GOP candidate Mitt Romney had picked Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential running mate.
Meanwhile, the commercial viability of local talk radio was beginning a slow but inexorable decline, as online streaming services became more popular. Listening to local radio during the daily commute was a habit for many people, but younger audiences were downloading playlists to Spotify, and never got the car-radio habit. Of course, being a local conservative talk-radio host was always a less lucrative career than many listeners may have imagines. You heard your local host in the morning, then Rush Limbaugh came on at noon — both of them on the same station — and you might have imagined that your local host was making the same kind of money as Rush, but au contraire! One year at CPAC, I found myself sitting outside a pub with a crowd that included a talk radio host who had gotten some nationwide attention, but was then working at a local station in the South and, wow, how bitter he was! Limbaugh had signed a $50,000-million-a-year contract and was carrying on as usual, meanwhile this local talk-radio guy was scrapping for every dollar, fighting against advertiser boycotts, etc. He felt like he was getting screwed over, trying to make a living in a dying business.
We can imagine that things weren’t much better for Charlie Sykes at WTMJ during that era, circa 2013-2015, as conservative talk radio was beginning its slow, steady descent into oblivion. Politically, however, there was reason for conservatives in Wisconsin to be optimistic. Walker defeated a recall effort in 2012 and, in 2014, was reelected to a second term by a comfortable 52%-47% margin. Walker was highly touted as a 2016 presidential candidate. Meanwhile, Republicans expanded their majority in the Wisconsin legislature and, in Washington, Paul Ryan was emerging as a congressional leader, his national profile boosted by his campaign as Romney’s running mate. In fall 2015, when House Speaker John Boehner stepped aside, Ryan became the Speaker, and it looked like a great time to be a conservative from Wisconsin. But in June 2015, Trump had taken that ride down the escalator, and one of the first casualties of Trump’s rise was the presidential candidacy of Scott Walker. After two lackluster debate performances, Walker dropped out of the primary campaign, and called on other GOP candidates to follow his lead, to unite behind a single alternative to Trump. This effort failed.
And it was just around that time, in the fall of 2015, that Charlie Sykes shoved all-in on #NeverTrump. Like most of his comrades in that project, Sykes has ended up a de facto liberal Democrat. Trump Derangement Syndrome is incurable like that: Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat.
Ace of Spades long ago took to mocking Sykes as “Charlie Three Wives,” and when you become an object of Ace’s ridicule, your credibility as a conservative is pretty much over. Like most of the #NeverTrump crowd, Sykes cannot accept responsibility for his own choices — it’s Trump’s fault he committed career suicide, you see. Now 68, Sykes is apparently determined to spend his dotage in the role of Grandpa Simpson.
It didn’t have to be this way. All of these people who let themselves be sucked into the vortex of Trump Derangement Syndrome could have resisted that temptation. There is plenty of viable political terrain between being a True Believer in the Cult of Personality, on the one hand, and being Charlie Sykes, on the other. Byron York, for example, has maintained both his sanity and his integrity during the past several years when many of his former colleagues went over the deep end with the #NeverTrump crowd. But if you listen to Charlie Sykes (or David French, or Bill Kristol, or Rick Wilson) they never stop insisting that their core principles as True Conservatives™ required them to die on that particular hill, and they are such absolute fanatics as to make the Khmer Rouge seem moderate by comparison. Is there a lesson here, a “moral to the story,” so to speak? I dunno. Politics is a team sport, and some of these guys seem to be like superstar NFL players who sign a big contract and then start acting like divas (e.g., Antonio Brown). They think they can throw a tantrum and walk off the field in the middle of a game, without damaging their own prospects. I’m reminded of an old Persian proverb, “The dogs may bark, but the caravan keeps rolling.”
It’s a shame what happened to Charlie. But it’s his own fault.
Before former President Donald Trump spoke to a capacity ballroom tonight at CPAC, they announced the results of their 2024 presidential straw poll, and it wasn’t close: Trump 62%, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis 20%, and everybody else in single digits.
Of course, we’re still many months away from the first televised debates among primary contenders, but a result like that has to be encouraging to Trump, and discouraging to anybody else thinking they have a chance to take the Republican nomination away from the man who, in his fiery speech, promised “those who have been wronged and betrayed” that he will be “your retribution.” This was, among other things, a reference to the hundreds of his supporters arrested in the J6 Capitol riot.
Donald Trump at CPAC: “I am your warrior, I am your Justice, and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution… I will totally obliterate the Deep State.”
Trump spoke for more than an hour and a half, and was repeatedly interrupted by chants of “USA! USA! USA!” More about the speech:
“The Republican Party was ruled by freaks, neocons, open border zealots, and fools,” Trump told CPAC, closing the four-day conference on Saturday. “We’re never going back to the party of Paul Ryan, Karl Rove, and Jeb Bush.”
“We are going to finish what we started,” he said. “We are going to complete this mission, we are going to see this battle through. We are going to make America great again.”
While criticizing Republicans who have proposed raising the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare, Trump indirectly referenced Ukraine as he tries to distinguish himself from Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), who has solidified his position as Trump’s chief opponent for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Trump is attempting to portray DeSantis as being closer to former President George W. Bush than his own “MAGA” base.
“We are never going back to a party that wants to give unlimited money to fight foreign endless wars, but demands we cut veteran benefits and retirement benefits at home,” he said.
“I’m the only candidate who can make this promise: I will prevent, and very easily, World War III,” he added, after which there were chants of “No more war!”
Trump also took on Democrats and his critics, describing them as people who “hate” the country and are seeking to “destroy it,” while contending they are “coming after” his supporters “and I’m just standing in their way.”
“Our enemies are lunatics and maniacs, and they cannot stand that they do not own me, they cannot shake me, they cannot control me,” he said. “I alone will never retreat.”
“In 2016, I declared: I am your voice,” he went on. “Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution.”
Whatever his critics may say, the fact remains that Trump still has millions of loyal supporters who will show up to vote in Republican primaries, and unless something changes drastically in the next few month, it is unlikely that anyone — including Ron DeSantis — can stop Trump from being the GOP nominee in 2024.
For some reason, I was under the impression that only the most respectable citizens were chosen to serve on grand juries, but I was apparently mistaken, and Fulton County’s Democratic district attorney, Fani Willis, picked this jury from a randomly selected pool of Fulton County residents. That this grand jury would choose Emily Kohrs as their forewoman — well, what does that tell you?
The foreperson, Emily Kohrs, then continued her media tour on MSNBC, joking about how “awesome” it would be to personally subpoena Trump. pic.twitter.com/x36YqWWD59
To many Millennial/Gen Z types, such an interest may not seem particularly odd — all kinds of people are into all kinds of things on social media — but what are the odds that, in choosing a grand jury to investigate the former President of the United States, this kooky young wicca woman would be chosen? Doesn’t this suggest non-random factors may have influenced the jury selection process?
Well, I’m sure Trump’s lawyers must have had a laugh — “WINNING!” — as they got to work on their motions to void the grand jury’s findings, but isn’t this a sad example of what’s wrong with America’s justice system?
